Many times, a board will maintain that they have full confidence in a CEO right up until they actually fire him. Their non-binding vote of confidence means nothing. Just as one example:

- July 25: Amid the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP publicly stated that Hayward had the board's full support.

- July 27: BP formally announced that Hayward would step down as CEO, with Robert Dudley replacing him.

Similar situations with Bob Chapek, Travis Kalanick, the Boeing CEO in 2019 when all those crashes were happening, Carol Bartz, Bob Diamond...

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MoisterOysterMu a day ago | parent | next [-]

I'm curious about what the reasoning is behind this practice. If a company's board puts out a statement of full confidence and rapidly changes their stance (in this case 3-4 days later) then doesn't that give the appearance that either the situation is drastically worse and they were inadequately informed at the time of stating confidence? I wouldn't feel very confident about the counsel of the board of directors that changed their stance that drastically in less than a week.

Just trying to understand what the benefit is to the approach from the perspective of the board.

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cmiles8 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

No board is going to say “we think the CEO is a bit crap, but we’re going to stick with them for now and see how it goes.”

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unsupp0rted a day ago | parent | next [-]

There are ways to say this without saying it

	▲	kbenson a day ago \| parent [-]
		But are there reasons for them to say it? They don't say it because there's no benefit to the company by saying it, either outright or implicit.

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sailfast a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“His moral failings are secondary to their commercial successes and clear delivery of shareholder value”

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ako a day ago | parent [-]

Did you expect anything else in a country that choose trump as their president?

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a day ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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sailfast a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The original post was about it being difficult to say they don't mind the ethical problems because the executive is important to the company. I was suggesting example phrasing. This has nothing to do with politics - it has always been the case, and always will be.

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bobanrocky a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh, c’mon. I’m not condoning anything that’s happening here, but CEOs having affairs is hardly unique to the US or a US government or trump.

	▲	ako a day ago \| parent [-]
		That's not what i referred to, it's the fact that society thinks it's ok: “His moral failings are secondary to their commercial successes and clear delivery of shareholder value”. It's a society where christians think Trump is a morally acceptable choice.

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sandworm101 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What about a board that says: "We think the CEO is a bit crap, but due to how the business is structured we have no actual power over him"? cough meta.